A Historical Comparison Of Exclusives

This is an analysis that compare all gaming exclusives, historically across all gaming platforms for individual developers. So, for example, rather than comparing PlayStation 4 exclusives to Xbox One exclusives, it instead compares all PlayStation exclusives from Sony's entire collection of consoles to all Xbox exclusives from Microsoft's entire collection of consoles. I.E. For the illustration just cited it would be comparing exclusives on the PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4, PSP & PSVita to the exclusives on the Xbox, Xbox 360 & Xbox One.

I believe that this is the first online resource that maintains this kind of information.

The purpose of this is to get a feel for how strong the developer has performed with their exclusive titles from a historical perspective. Metacritic scores are used for providing rank, and therefore an exclusive must have a Metacritic score to show. PC exclusives are also included in the comparison, dating back to when the first started appearing on Metacritic (roughly 1990).

Only those exclusives with a 'good' Metacritic score of show (75+).

Please read this if you would like to understand how I determine if a game is exclusive of not.

Determining if a game is exclusive is perhaps the greatest challenge of maintaining this information. It is not a simple black and white process, especially in a generation where remakes and ports are so common across multiple platforms.

In order to try and maintain consistent information, I came up with a few ground-rules:

The exclusive must have a Metacritic Score of 75+ to count

This comparison is only investigating Metacritic 'good' games

Collections don't count

Collections of games are not considered. For example the Nathan Drake Collection is not considered, although the original individual games within that collection are

The games must be standalone to count

No expansions and DLC pack. For example this means that MMO expansion do not qualify, such as the World of Warcraft expansions. However games such as Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void do since they recieved a standalone release

A game can only show once, even if it has multiple copies across multiple platforms

Furthermore, if mutliple versions of a game exist, the earliest version that has a Metacritic score is considered. If a game had a release on two platforms simultaneously (for example the PS3 & PS4) then the one with the most metacritic reviews is selected

The game can not have come to any other platforms in any iteration, port or collection what-so-ever.

For example the well received PlayStation 2 title Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty is not counted since it was part of the Metal Gear Solid HD Collection released on the Xbox 360

Similarly, Mobile releases, or releases on any handheld devices outside of the platforms family will also disqualify a title as being exclusive. Arcade releases are fine however, as are Linux / Mac OS releases for PC.

If you have any questions, or would like to voice your opinion, then feel free to contact me here.